Slashdot Mirror
Steam For Linux: A Respectable Showing
An anonymous reader writes "Valve has just released its February, 2013 Steam Hardware & Software Survey, and the results are absolutely mind blowing. Linux is now standing strong as a legitimate gaming platform. It now represents 2.02% of all active Steam users."
That's in keeping with what new submitter lars_doucet found. Lars writes: "I'm an independent game developer lucky enough to be on Steam. Recently, the Steam Linux client officially went public and was accompanied by a site-wide sale. The Linux sale featured every single Linux-compatible game on the service, including our cross-platform game Defender's Quest. .... Bottom line: during the sale we saw nearly 3 times as many Linux sales of the game as Mac (Windows still dominated overall)."
Right now it's brand new and much-hyped, we could easily be dealing with a case of regression to the mean.
Let's see how the numbers looks 6 months down the road.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Ever hear of growth? You have to start somewhere. I'd say it's not bad. Just give it time, you're passing judgment too soon.
Bing market share = failure. Linux 2% = Victory.
5% of the market leader is a failure, 2% for the market trailer is a success.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
A respectable showing? The steam client may be the greatest thing ever but there isn't even a single current AAA title available. Not one. The biggest game they've got is half-life 1. It was released in 1998. 15 years ago. That's something we should be getting from gog.com. This looks to me like a token effort in order to get some cheap advertising on Linux friendly sites such as Slashdot.
News flash, that game's so old it probably plays perfectly in wine anyway. When steam for Linux starts getting AAA titles within a few weeks of the windows release then they will have something worth talking about.
If this article had been on neowin and had praised Microsoft's new OS for breaking through on a gaming distribution platform after a lot of marketing effort from the distributor including an opening sales and had managed 2% share, Slashdotters would have been cackling and calling it hype.
What the TFA is is hype and wishful thinking. Linux has an enormous long way to go before its even considered worth porting to as part of current game development.
Its a start, but no more than that.
Those of us who are old enough can remember lots of dawns in the IT industry - most of them false.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Nope. That's why Valve is doing this... to avoid having MS having them by the balls.
That tradeshow lunch didn't happen a decade ago. The CEO proudly showed off his netbook in the morning and publicly apologised for it in the afternoon. No "conspiracy", just business being done via blunt methods.
Valve is incredibly successful as a store selling games on Windows. Creating a Linux gaming platform is an enormous amount of work to enter a currently miniscule market. The ONLY reason Valve is doing it is they are worried about Microsoft deciding, in Steve Ballmer's immortal words, to "choke off their air supply".